Ready or Not
by Emiliya Wolfe
Summary: It's the summer of her fourth year at Hogwarts, and Dolores Umbridge is looking forward to two ordinary things: becoming a Prefect and her brother getting his Hogwarts letter. But summer has another plan in store for her, one that will change her life for good and lead her to her extraordinary actions later in life.


**Written for the QLFC round 4: Write about the Umbridges.**

 **Team: Tutshill Tornados**

 **Position: Keeper**

 **Thanks to the amazing Tornados for beta-ing each of these fics, and yet I keep forgetting to mention them.**

 **Also thanks to Lily MJ Fae's story** **"Little Thief" which partly inspired this fic.**

 **WC: 1,672**

 ** _AN: The name Benoni means "Son of my sorrows"_**

* * *

'Ready or not, here I come!' Dolores cried, removing her hands from her face three seconds before she was supposed to.

Her brother wouldn't notice though; he never did when she cheated. That or he didn't care. Either way, Dolores always found a way to circumvent the rules of the game. Racing around the garden, she was disappointed to find her little brother just standing next to the dustbins in front of the house.

'Ben!' she admonished. 'What did I say earlier? You're supposed to hide, and I'm supposed to seek. You're not hiding at all.'

'Sorry, Dolly,' Benoni replied dutifully in a plaintive voice. 'But look! We can't just leave him there.'

He stepped around to reveal a small black cat cowering over a broken bin bag, the previous week's food littering the ground. Dolores knew immediately that it was a stray. Its matted fur, torn ear and showing ribcage were all proof of its life on the streets.

Her brother seemed to have an affinity for weak and pitiful cats. It was one of the reasons she was sure that he was magical, even though he was now ten and had still showed no signs. Perhaps he would find a familiar, or become an Animagus. All she knew was that he seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to felines in need.

'Another one, Benoni?' she asked, but she couldn't bring herself to scold him. She loved the little kittens just as much as he did.

Adjusting her pink Alice band to keep the curls out of her face, she knelt down and picked up the cat, ignoring its hissing. Its claws had been broken off, most likely in a fight of some sort, and so it dealt no damage.

With the first few cats, she had waited patiently for them to trust her, but she found that this method worked just as well once the cats realised they would get a regular supply of food. Benoni would be able to coax the kitten out of its shell once it had healed.

'Let's bring this back to Daddy, then,' Dolores said, nodding towards the house.

A brilliant smile lit up Benoni's face, and he scampered back into the house to call for their parents. By the time Dolores had entered the front room, her mother had set out a bowl of fresh water and some soft cat food for kittens. The rest of the cats must have been in the garden, because none vied for Benoni's attention as they usually would.

'Come here, you,' Ellen Umbridge cooed to the kitten, who wriggled out of Dolores's arms to the waiting food.

The three of them watched the cat munch with gusto in silence for a few minutes.

'We need to give him a name!' Benoni suddenly burst out, unable to contain himself any longer. As an afterthought, he added. 'Can he stay?'

'Of course he can, dear.' Ellen smiled down at her youngest. She rested her hands on her hips to think. 'Now, how about Mittens? His little white paws are just adorable!'

'How about Selwyn?' Dolores asked swiftly, shooting her mother a dark look. She was already treated as a commoner by the other students at Hogwarts because of her dirty blood; there was no need to have Benoni's future familiar suffer the same fate.

'Selwyn?' her mother asked, her eyebrows furrowed. 'Is that the pure-blood your father is so obsessed with tracing?'

'As a matter of fact, it is,' Dolores replied stiffly. 'I think it's a worthy pursuit.'

Ellen shook her head, but stayed silent. Dolores was glad. Her mother just didn't understand the intricacies of the wizarding world. She never would.

'I'll call him Selwyn,' Benoni said, brows furrowed in thought, 'and Mittens can be his nickname. Like Dolores and Dolly!' he exclaimed.

He clapped his hands in delight, happy with his compromise, and headed into the garden to search for the other cats.

'Just like Dolores and Dolly,' his mother agreed, giving her daughter a guarded look behind his back.

Dolores never let anyone call her Dolly but Ben. It was such a crude and common name, so…Muggle. Her father had always placed so much importance on wizarding names, insisting on Dolores instead of Dorothy as her mother had initially wanted.

In fact, he was so convinced that the wizarding world was better than the Muggle one that Dolores wondered why he had ever married her mother in the first place. Her own life would have been so much easier had she been a pure-blood.

Still, her father insisted that her mother had strong wizarding blood in her veins, even if it was Squib blood. Besides, it was her mother's inheritance that kept them living in such a nice neighbourhood. A glorified cleaner couldn't support a family of four alone.

Now that Dolores thought about her blood, it was true that she had an affinity for the hexes and jinxes learnt in Defence Against the Dark Arts that far surpassed her fellow fourth years. So she gave her mother a tight smile and walked back upstairs to look up her mother's family tree. There had to be a notable wizard in there somewhere.

* * *

'Tell me about Hogwarts, Dolly,' Benoni requested, his large, liquid eyes filled with hope.

He was sitting on the pink, fluffy rug by Dolores's four poster bed - something she had insisted on getting when she first returned from Hogwarts. The sound of their parents shouting could faintly be heard through the crack under the door, punctuated by several large crashes. Their mother had a tendency to express herself by throwing household objects.

Dolores herself was sprawled over the covers, but she rolled over to face her brother with an _oomph_ , resting her head on her hands.

'I hate it, Ben,' she admitted. She had wanted to give her brother good news, but she could never lie to him. Her face darkened as she remembered her interactions with her classmates so far. She cast around for something nice to say. 'But that's just because of the students. They're all really immature. No one respects authority or the right way to do things. When I become a Prefect, everything will be orderly and then it'll be nice. And next year I'll look after you and you'll love it. You can bring a familiar, like Shafiq.'

Shafiq was the first cat Benoni had rescued. She was a fluffy grey Persian cat with yellow-green eyes. Her tail was broken in three places and she was bow-legged, but she had grown fat and healthy over the years. Back in her first year, Dolores had refused to leave home without her.

'How will I ever choose?' Benoni said, wide-eyed. He looked around, as if the cats would materialise around him. Dolores half-wished they would - at least that would prove that her little brother was magical without a doubt.

'You'll just know,' she replied importantly, letting no trace of her worries show. 'There'll be one that you feel like you can connect with, on a deeper level than the others.'

They lapsed into silence. Dolores thought back to when she first arrived at Hogwarts. She had been happy to have Shafiq with her then. Benoni would fit in fine, whichever of the seven others he chose.

Suddenly, she realised that the silence was too quiet. The argument was over, for now.

'I'm going to see the others,' Benoni said, getting up from his cross-legged position. 'I want to be ready when my letter comes.'

And despite her best efforts to shield her little brother, Dolores knew that Benoni had heard the silence too.

* * *

They were sitting around the breakfast table when the owl showed up. Dolores nearly knocked over the toaster in her haste to open the window. The owl swooped over the table, making everyone duck in the process, before flying back out.

'Every time,' Ellen complained, setting the salt and pepper shakers upright and reaching for a napkin. 'When are they going to use the normal kind of post?'

'This _is_ the normal kind of post, Ellen,' Orford Umbridge replied in a constrained voice. 'Well then, let's see them!'

Dolores immediately spotted the letter with her name on it, tearing it open. Reading over the schoolbook list, she turned it over. There was nothing written on the back. Checking inside the envelope again, she angrily thrust it away.

'I can't believe this!' she shouted, scraping her chair back in anger. 'I wasn't made Prefect! I was perfect for the position! I bet it's that Slughorn; he's my Head of House. He's always had it in for me!'

'Dolores,' Ellen said with a hint of impatience. 'Be reasonable. Perhaps there was just someone better suited?'

She placed a hand on her daughter's arm, but Dolores snatched it away. 'No! He hates me, I'm sure of it. This is so unfair.'

Suddenly, she noticed that Benoni was looking at her, his eyes wide with fear. Her brother had always been the fragile one in the family, born after the arguments had started. For his sake, she took a deep breath and calmly sat back down.

'Where's your letter, Benoni?' she asked, her voice sickly sweet even to her own ears. But perhaps it would appease her brother.

He simply shook his head.

'Come on, Ben,' she said kindly. 'Hogwarts isn't so bad. Your letter must be in this pile of rubbish somewhere.'

She rummaged in the stacks of bills that remained unpaid for days in the centre of the table, looking for the Hogwarts logo. When at first she couldn't find it, she started throwing them on the floor.

 _I must have missed it_ , she thought, pursing her lips.

'Dolores!' her mother admonished.

'Dolores,' her father repeated, his tone harsh.

Dolores looked up.

Benoni started crying.

'Oh,' Dolores replied in a small voice, looking at the final letter in her hand.

She finally understood.


End file.
